RedHanded - Melanie McGuire: The Suitcase Killer | #403

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Melanie McGuire was a beautiful young nurse who wouldn’t hurt a fly. So when her husband’s chopped-up remains were found in three separate suitcases in the Chesapeake Bay, she suddenly had a lot to answer for…Was this petite New Jersey mum capable of killing her husband and disposing of his body in such a gruesome way? Or was this – as she claimed – a huge Sopranos-style stitch-up?Sex, drugs and luggage: this week’s case is one you won’t wanna miss.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Premium Blackjack Pro, where strategy meets top-tier gameplay. Drop in on the exciting Sugar Rush and Crazy Time slot games, or play the dazzling MGM Grand Emerald Nights, a slot experience that captures the magic of MGM. With so many games, it's time to make your move. Download the app and visit BedMGM Ontario today to experience the next level of gaming. Visit BedMGM.com for terms and conditions.

19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please, gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's American History Tellers.

In our latest series, at the turn of the 20th century, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and political corruption were ravaging America. But soon, President Theodore Roosevelt and a diverse group of reformers known as progressives would fight back. Listen to American History Tellers on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondry presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups.

Follow Death County PA on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I think you mean I'm sick man of Europe. Oh man, I am indeed. I'm so sorry. I have like six pictures and a video on my phone of puss oozing out of my belly button. I actually really want to see.

Let's have a little look. I tried to show my mom and she was all my sick. Oh no, I actually am really excited about this. I've been thinking about it since we were upstairs. And then when I gave it a little poke, blood. Oh, that's the good stuff yeah. Rough times. At least it's not green. No no and at least I know what's wrong now. Mm-hmm. Because I was feeling fine, I was fucking having a fucking great time.

Went to Italy, I was like oh fine, I'm dancing at the wedding sober. I was like this. Good for you. Look at me, I was like this good for you look at me I can do this on the plane home I was like oh my belly burns I hadn't cried a bit and obviously I've got keloid scars there from two previous laparoscopies and then I've been putting lidocaine on it but the pain was getting worse and worse felt very unwell yesterday woke up this morning wiped the lidocaine off oh there, there's the pass. Got an emergency appointment just cause I was like, don't want to get sepsis or some shit, which is like my biggest new biggest fear. And then he was like, Oh yeah, that's that.

But you should definitely still go to a doctor later today so they can check you over. Okay. But anyway, we've taken the painkillers, taken the nerve painkillers specifically, which is what I needed because I was, I was knocking back painkillers and I don't normally even like them and it wasn't touching, wasn't touching a fucking thing. So I'm feeling a little bit drowsy, but we're not going to operate any heavy machine. We're just going to talk about murder.

And I have also started the antibiotics. So I'm hopeful that he was like, you know, if you're not okay in three days then call 111 again. Let's talk about some other disgusting things. Because on the 5th of May 2004, two fishermen and their sons were out on the Chesapeake Bay near Virginia Beach when they snagged an unexpected catch. A suitcase. Inside was a pussy belly button. No I'm just kidding. It was a pair of male legs, sawn off from the knees down, described as appearing fresh. So you know so much for that wholesome lads and dads fishing trip. Hmm, probably not that pussy then if they're fresh.

Exactly. Would it pass if it's not connected to you and you're dead? Probably not because pussies are fighting infection isn't it? Hmm, so sloughing. Just straight to the slough. So the person those legs had belonged to turned out to be a 39-year-old guy named Bill McGuire who lived over 300 miles away in New Jersey. And just days before being chopped up into pieces and stuffed into luggage, Bill's life had been looking pretty damn rosy. He was a US Navy vet with a beautiful wife and two cute kids and he'd just got the keys

for his dream family home in late April. But before the ink could even dry on those mortgage papers, Bill had suddenly vanished. And with the discovery of his brutally dismembered remains, questions were raised about the reality beneath the surface of his seemingly tranquil life, especially when it came to

his wife Melanie, a nurse at a local fertility clinic, who was starting to seem not quite as innocent as she tried to appear. As investigators dug deeper, they found evidence of a turbulent marriage, a scandalous years-long affair with her doctor boss no less, and a series of bizarrely incriminating moves. Was Melanie a scheming Jezebel who callously offed her husband? I think Jezebel is very misunderstood and I will just put that there and I'll come back to it in my Bible series.

Or was she stitched up, just like the real Jezebel by prosecutors, who refused to explore other avenues, like Bill being a victim of a mob hit from shady gambling bodies in his beloved Atlantic City? Unsurprisingly, Melanie McGuire says that the latter turn of events is the one that is true. But it's our podcast, so we're going to say what we think happened and we're going to tell the story our way. This Maguire is in control of this narrative. And also, a lot of people think that, so Melanie spells it with M small C

big G. I don't. A lot of people think that M small C big G is the Scottish way of spelling it and the way I spell it, M-A-G, is the Irish way of spelling it. And the way I spell it, MAG is the Irish way of spelling it. That's what I would have thought. Incorrect. It's actually because it's a clan name and it's existed since before the written word. They both mean the same thing. They just got written down differently. That makes sense.

This story is not about clan names. It's a high stakes tale about a hard gambling husband, a pretty nurse and a grisly murder plot, just like something out of The Sopranos. So come with us as we explore the messy life of Melanie McGuire, New Jersey's infamous suitcase killer. We have had so many requests to cover this case over the years, so I'm glad we're finally getting down to it. Born in October 1972 in the suburbs of New Jersey, Melanie was raised by her mum Linda and stepfather Michael Capraro, who she basically considered to be her dad.

Petite with bouncy corkscrew curls and striking brown eyes, Melanie knew how to stand out. A Jersey girl through and through. But this beauty also had brains and she graduated from Rutgers University in 1994 with a double major in mathematics and psychology. Loved ones described Melanie's personality as warm, compassionate and caring. As her mum Linda put it, Melanie thinks she can fix everything. So when it came to a career, nursing just made sense. Melanie threw herself into it headfirst, graduating second in her class from the Charles E. Gregory School of Nursing in 1997, ready to save the world, one patient at a time.

But while she flourished academically, Melanie's personal life was a little messier. Her best mate, Celine Trevizas, has said that while Melanie was strong in some ways, she was quote, very weak in others. Aren't we all? But Melanie's major weakness was men. According to Celine, Melanie was one of those girls who always had a boyfriend, with the technical term for that is serial monogamist. And Melanie would go out with literally anyone who told her that they liked her, even if they were no

good. Enter William T. McGuire, who everyone called Bill, a Navy veteran, eight years Melanie's senior. The pair met while Melanie was in nursing school and Bill was studying to be a pharmacist in the late 90s and outside of their studies they worked at the same New Jersey restaurant. So let's just say it wasn't exactly love at first sight. Melanie says that Bill had an attitude while Bill thought Melanie was an intellectual snob in the beginning. Bill had recently separated from his first wife, Marcy, but already had a new girlfriend called Cathy, who Melanie was actually pretty good mates with. And as for Melanie, she was seeing

someone called Brian, who by all accounts, was nice but as usually happens, a bit of a bore. Bill McGuire on the other hand was anything but dull. He was a big character, charismatic, funny and impulsive. Known for his banter with customers, he was jokingly referred to as the rude waiter at the place that they worked. So despite both being shacked up with other people, when they first met, sparks flew anyway and Melanie and Bill eventually became an item. And according to Melanie, Bill's ex-wife Marcy warned that she'd learned the hard way about

Bill. He would be abusive and make her believe that she was crazy, but Melanie was in love. So why would she listen to a spurned ex? Besides, maybe a part of Melanie liked the drama of it all. Whilst being charming and funny, Bill also had a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, meaning that he struggled to hold down jobs long-term. But Melanie says that she admired Bill's hustler tenacity. I don't know if being unable to keep a job makes you a hustler. I think it's the next bit because inevitably whenever he would get fired, he

wouldn't come home until he convinced someone else to hire him. That's phase one. Yes, yes. So Bill very much lived fast, in every sense of the word. His favourite hobby was high-stakes blackjack and he managed to get his driver's licence suspended a whopping 33 times for speeding. When a scheme to avoid getting yet more points on his license landed him in hot water, Bill asked Melanie to take the fall for him, although she refused because it could have jeopardised her place at nursing school.

So while Bill did manage to avoid some serious consequences, he ended up getting a felony conviction that forced him to drop out of his pharmacy studies. According to Melanie, Bill was furious at her betrayal, at, you know, not taking the fall for all of his speeding. And she said that it almost broke them. Almost, but not quite, because Bill and Melanie went ahead and tied that knot in 1999. Soon after they had their first son and for a while things seemed to have settled down a bit. Bill retrained as a computer programmer and got a stable job at a college in Newark. But you will be unsurprised to hear on a true crime body horror suitcase leg show.

Things did not stay rosy for long. It was around this time Bill's fondness for gambling went from hobby to obsession. A friend of his called John Rice says that Blackjack was his game and he took it very seriously. Bill regularly drove to Atlantic City where he often won big and lost big too. This high-stakes behavior wasn't just in the casino, it was happening at home too because neither Melanie or Bill were particularly good at the whole monogamy thing. Bill even had an affair with an egg donor from the fertility clinic where Melanie worked. Oh my god.

Why do you always catch me at my lowest point, Elgar? Naughty sexy queen. Melanie admits that she gave as good as she got in the infidelity department. Whenever Bill was unfaithful she would go up and hook up with someone to spite him. So pretty toxic thus far. I'm Josh Mankiewicz and I hope you'll join us for season four of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators

solve a mystery. Dateline Missing in America. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. I'm Ian Urbina back with an all-new season of The Outlaw Ocean. The stories we bring you this season are literally life or death. We look into the shocking prevalence of forced labor, mine-boggling overfishing, migrants hunted and captured. The outlaw ocean takes you where others won't. Available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. And then in late 2001, while Melanie was heavily pregnant with the pair's second child, she knew her marriage to Bill was going downhill fast. So, what did she do?

Well, she gave her married boss oral sex in his office, just one month before her due date. Yes, you heard that right. Melanie fell head over swollen heels for one of the fertility clinic's partners, Dr Bradley Miller, and then swiftly embarked on an extramarital affair that would last three years. She says she's not proud of it, but that it wasn't just sex. She said that her and Dr Miller were in love, but both of them had small children and were in no position to leave their families, yet.

So by 2004, Melanie was still with Bill, living in a cramped townhouse in Woodbridge, a typical working-class neighbourhood of New Jersey. Their relationship was as tempestuous as ever, often having blazing rows. Bill was keen, however, to buy them a dream family home. Maybe he thought that would somehow fix all of their marital problems. Though Melanie, who was by now very used to his flights of fancy, didn't think he'd actually come up with the money for a down payment. But he did. On the 28th of April 2004, Bill and Melanie signed the papers to close

the sale on their first family home, a large colonial house on two acres of land which cost them a cool $500,000. It was a big step up for the family, but Melanie just wasn't that excited about it. Why could that be? I mean, possibly, because she was on the phone to her lover called Bradley Miller that evening, and he was pissed off to learn that she had committed to such a huge purchase with her husband. But Melanie assured him that it would all be fine and that she'd take care of things. Meanwhile, Bill was pleased as punch.

I think I would be pretty pleased with a colonial mansion for half a million. I know! Fucking hell! Good work. I mean, look, Bill's got a lot of issues. But he also has excellent taste. And also, you can just be in the other wing. Just stay on that side of the house, Bill. Never have to see you giving your boss oral sex. Bill was on the phone as well that evening but not to a love-ale. He called up his friends instead because evenings are for the boys and he called them at 5 44

pm and 5 59 pm to tell them the excellent news. Although he didn't respond to a call from the house seller later that evening which was a bit unlike him. And Bill wasn't active on his phone or on his BlackBerry either. Actually, there's no indication that Bill McGuire spoke to anyone else after that 559 phone call ever again. So what happened next? Well, from here on out, we've only got Melanie's story to go on and

as you will soon see Melanie's side of the story is to be taken with a New Jersey sized pinch of salt. Yeah. So here is Melanie's version of events. She says that she and Bill got into another intense row that went on into the early hours. This time he was apparently pissed off with how she'd done the laundry. That can be really annoying though. It's like loading the dishwasher. Everyone has got a way that they do it. I'm not saying that it should be the cause of an enormous row but I don't think it's actually ever about the laundry or the dishwasher is it it? Frictions are going to get robbed. Yes. Yeah.

I will say I do not load the dishwasher and I do not do the laundry. I'll do my own laundry. I don't do anyone else's laundry because people get pissed. You're right. People get pissed off with you. I might have just done just only washing for you, you stupid dick. I know. I'm like, look, my problem is I have a very lazy laundry routine because I don't wear white and I don't really own that many things that need ironing. Yeah I have only just in my 34th year on this planet admitted that I should iron things sometimes. I don't even own an iron. I found one in the in a cupboard the other Nice, nice. And I refuse to separate. Oh no, I don't separate colours.

What is this? The 1800s? Fucking get in there. It's fine. Whatever. Other people feel differently. So they can do their own fucking laundry. Anyway, this is apparently what causes this massive argument between Bill and Melanie. And she claims that Bill struck her in the

face, shoved her against a wall, and then very symbolically stuffed a dryer sheet in her mouth. Just to really hammer that point home, I suppose. Dryer sheets I can't be bothered with either. I don't have a dryer. Do you not? At my parents' house where I currently am, I do. Yeah. But at the London house, I don't have a dryer. Do you not? At my parents house where I currently am, I do. Yeah. But at the London house, I don't have a dryer. See, I don't have a garden, so I kind of... I mean, I'm going

to buy a dryer. I just think it's better. I think it's better. I agree. I actually also, this might be quite controversial. I don't like the smell of laundry that's been dried outside. I have one of those big electric dryers that's... And sometimes if I'm feeling really like I've got the will to live, sometimes I will hang things on there. But then they stay there for about three weeks. Yeah. Now I just stick everything on the various clothes horses and then probably exacerbate any sort of underlying damp problem in that house. Yeah. Yeah. But I put a dehumidifier on and put it right next to it. Oh, well then you're doing much better than me. She's probably by a dryer, shouldn't I? So, big argument, gets physical.

You know, dryer sheets getting stuffed in mouths and all sorts, apparently. And this apparently really shocked Melanie, because the couple's previous arguments had always been feisty, but this was the first time, according to Melanie, that Bill had ever hit her. Melanie said that she hid in the bathroom with her eldest child while Bill angrily packed his bags and ranted that he was leaving for good and that she would have to explain to the kids that she was the reason they'd have to grow up without a father. But then apparently Bill always said this kind of thing when they fought.

Melanie says that Bill's friends even apparently called him Mr 360 because he was forever doing the opposite of what he said he'd do but that would probably make him Mr 180. Mr 360 would mean that he just does the thing he says he was gonna do. Just don't think anyone puts that much effort into a nickname. No. Mr. 360. Yeah, it's like LL Cool Joe. You gave yourself that name. So when Bill allegedly stormed out of the house at 2am, Melanie says that she thought

for sure that he'd just returned to the house eventually after he'd called out. The closest I would come to ever calling anyone Mr Mr 360 is I do call people Captain Obvious quite a lot of the time. Like if you're like, oh my god, they've just walked in and they're like, where? That is, that's as far as I'll go. So yes, she's like, whatever, he'll calm down, he'll come back when he's ready. But she wasn't going to forgive him this time, because for Melanie, it was the final straw. So the next day she actually went to the local courthouse to file a restraining order against Bill. Although, and this really you know, it's just quite telling. She says that the queue was too long so she just came home and didn't stick it out to get the restraining

order. But she'd return the next day and got the job done, even telling her friends and family that she was going to file for divorce. Melanie claimed that she had no clue at all where Bill had run off to. But wherever it was, she did not want him back. This is where things get interesting. A week later on the 5th of, those fishermen and their traumatised children caught the first suitcase with Bill's legs in it. The appendages were wrapped in garbage bags. I hate that I just said that. Bin bags, secured with tape and had no smell to suggest that those fishermen were about to open up a grisly pass the parcel present. On the 11th of May, a graduate student was birdwatching on Fisherman Island, a teeny

tiny isle close to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, when they stumbled on another suitcase. But by now the remains inside were not so fresh. This case carried the telltale stench of death. Fearing the worst, the student cut their twitching trip short and called the police. Who gingerly opened the case? The same brand and dark green colour as the one with the legs in this time it contained a man's torso and a head That's the worst bit to find if I'm gonna find a suitcase. Yeah with dismembered body bits in mmm. I take the legs

I don't want to be finding the torso in the head that to me is the worst Think knobs worst just a knob just a knob Yes, the suitcase with a knob. Just a knob. Just a suitcase with a knob in it. Because I'd have to, you know, it would take you quite a long time to figure out what it is I think. And then you'd be like, I've been looking at this for like 15 minutes and now I've just realized what it is.

That's true. Would you say that in this torso, the genitalia was probably still attached if he was cut off at the knee? I would have thought so. Yeah. There you go. That's the worst. No, thanks. I think maybe arms is all right. So yeah, there you go. That's the worst.

No thanks. I think maybe arms is all right. Hands are less offensive than feet. Yeah, I agree. Anyway, the arms we don't know yet, but there was no question of how this man had met his end. He'd been shot twice in the abdomen and once in the head with 38 caliber wad cutter bullets that were still lodged in his torso. His face was bloated from being in the water but still had distinguishing features.

And then a third and final suitcase was discovered floating near another bridge island on the 16th of May, which contained the other bits of his legs, hip to knee. Like a gruesome game of human Jenga, all of the body parts in all three of the suitcases matched up. But the police had zero clue who it was yet. On the 21st of May, Virginia police released a composite sketch of Bayguide's face in the hopes that somebody would recognise him. And somebody did. Susan Rice, the wife of Bill's close Navy buddy John. Now while John took some convincing, Susan was adamant that it was Bill.

The body washed up had the same little red mark on his cheek that Bill had. And tests confirmed that the body in the suitcase was indeed, as Susan had correctly guessed, William T. Maguire. Back in New Jersey, his wife, Melanie, had filed for divorce on the 25th of May. The very next day, police informed Melanie of their discovery. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband was in fact her late husband. And almost at once, Melanie started moving mad. The very first thing Melanie did was move out of the Woodbridge house. She'd scrubbed the place from top to bottom with the help of her best friend Celine.

Police finally got to sit down with Melanie and grill her on the 2nd of June. After almost a month of no contact from Bill, why hadn't she raised the alarm by reporting him missing? She claimed that she'd wanted to, but her divorce lawyer had advised her that might not be so wise. Melanie later said that she talked openly to investigators, quote unquote, naively, wanting to help them find who had murdered Bill. I think that's because you think you're smarter than everybody, Melanie. Yeah, we've seen your type before. And actually, it's not true.

In her police interviews, Melanie kept plenty of her cards very close to her chest. She said absolutely nothing about her long-standing affair with Dr Bradley Miller from her work, because according to her, they never asked. To be fair, they should have asked. I mean! Melanie also neglected to mention that just two days before Bill apparently walked out on her, she brought her very first gun, a .38 caliber rifle with Wadcutt bullets, which sounds a bit familiar doesn't it? When it came to the suitcases that Bill's body had turned up in, Melanie admitted that the Maguiats owned the same set. But she wasn't too sure

if it was missing because the looming move meant everything was upside down. And for all her reticence, Melanie was keen to tell the cops all about Bill's gambling habit and his tendency to rile up the wrong people. And she very casually mentioned that she thought they just might find his car in Atlantic City. A prophecy which, Kelso Priese, turned out to be absolutely true. Look, Melanie, you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job of, you know, not sharing too much, playing your cards close to your chest. But let's just slow it down a little bit.

Don't start telling the police where they're going to find your murdered husband's car because it's going to make you look real fucking suspicious lady. So while Melanie urged investigators to look into Bill's gambling habits in Atlantic City, hinting at some mysterious enemy, police were very much suspicious of her from day one. Still with no hard evidence yet Melanie remained a free woman and now she had a funeral to arrange. She quickly put together a very simple military service claiming that it was what Bill would have wanted but the funeral was shockingly brief, lasting

barely ten minutes and even more jarringly, the couple's two young sons weren't even there. None of it sat right with Bill's loved ones, including his close friends John and Sue Rice. The whole thing felt rushed, detached, almost like Melanie just wanted to get it over with. Sue, who had been, if you remember, the one to identify Bill's body, remembers calling Melanie after the funeral and blasting her, telling her that Bill deserved so much more. But Melanie was cold, saying that now she was a single mum. She needed to move on with her life. Sue turned to John after hanging up and said, she did it.

Which is quite the leap, but I do feel like, you know, Sue, Susan Rice, good old Susan Rice, has proven to be quite the bloodhound and sniffing stuff out in this case. And as we always say, to quote Tommy Fury, you've got to listen to your gut that's why it's there. You do indeed. Actually, the older I get the more I'm like yes that is true. Even if it's oozing with pus? Especially then, because it's like help me, take me to the doctor. I'm helping, I'm helping. And listen, it wasn't only Sue that thought this.

Bill's family clearly felt the same way. Bill's sister Cindy even launched a bid to get full custody of Bill's two boys. There was no way she was going to let her nephews live with the woman that she believed had killed their dad. Now while tensions rose in Melanie's personal life, the investigation against her rumbled on. And before long, investigators built up a case that even quick-tongued Melanie would find impossible to explain away. One of the biggest red flags in Melanie's story was

exactly what she was getting up to in the days after Bill disappeared, specifically where she was going. She'd been a very busy girl, it turned out. As a part of their investigation, police dug up her EZ pass, which is easy pass records. If you don't know what that is, you've never hired a car in America. It's a pass to get you through toll roads. You can add it on to any rental car service, it's always worth doing in my opinion. And if you have a pass, it just scans it as you drive through and you don't have to like put money in the machine like a pleb and there are loads of those in the

northeast of the US which is where this case happens and that data was a bit of a problem for Melanie. Yeah because you Hannah as somebody who doesn't live in the US but yes has driven cars in the US, was fully aware of this information. So I do wonder why Melanie, a lady who lives in the North East of the US, where a lot of these easy pass toll scanning things exist, may be neglected to think this through. I think if you're not confronted with it where you have to like, oh, fuck, I'm at the barrier, but I think it probably is quite an easy thing to forget, but a very silly thing not to consider. That's because this information revealed that Melanie had taken two separate trips to Atlantic

City after she claimed that Bill had walked out on his family, so the night of the 28th of April, the dry sheet incident, and she'd failed to mention those trips in her extensive police interviews. What even when she told the police that they might find her husband Bill's car in Atlantic City? Police also, on top of this evidence, found grainy surveillance footage of an unidentifiable figure parking Bill's car in the car park of a shady Atlantic City motel called The Flamingo the following night.

All they could see from the footage was that the person parking the car didn't look like Bill, but it could have been Melanie. And a vehicle that looked an awful lot like her Nissan Pathfinder was spotted on CCTV nearby at a similar time. So it looked like Melanie McGuire, with the help of an unknown accomplice, had taken both of those cars to Atlantic City, perhaps to stage a scene making it look like Bill had left of his own free will, possibly covering up the darker reality of his disappearance. Why would you not drive Bill's car, leave it, because that CCTV footage, she has not considered this, but in the grand scheme of things, that's not going to hold up in court

as an identifier. No. It's not going to fly, right? Then you fucking leave it and get a cab home. Oh, well, we're going to get to that in a second. Because look- Don't take your car! I know.

Because look, what I want to say is like this case, I think it's because I have seen pictures of Melanie McGuire in the past, and I remember thinking it was like, this must be a really old and timey case, but I think it's just because like in some of the pictures she's, she's got like quite a, what feels like quite a seventies top on and she's got quite a curly hair that could look like a perm. Just to remind everybody, this is happening in the early 2000s. This isn't a past okays. So I do feel like this idea of her having quite so little, how do I put this, time spent

thinking about CCTV is quite frankly shocking. Yeah. Under pressure, Melanie admitted that she did indeed drive to Atlantic City the night after Bill left. But everything had a totally innocent explanation she promised. So stick with us as we talk you through more of Melanie's bizarre version of events. So Melanie claims that she spotted Bill's car from the highway parked in the lot of one of his favorite horns, the Taj Mahal casino. She impulsively decided to move his car that was in this car park to spite him. Something she says

that they often did to one another as a little couple's prank. I wonder how many other casinos are named after mausoleums? There's got to be pyramid ones. They're kind of mausoleums, aren't they? They bury people in them. Yeah, I guess so. That's a fun pointless question. So yeah, she says that she gets to his car.

It's unlocked. She checks inside and she found two mobile phones, one that she recognized as Bill's and another that she'd never seen before. And she claimed to the police that for some reason she threw these phones away. Now after moving his car, as part of her hilarious joke, Melanie said that she started to feel a bit wobbly. Apparently her boss slash lover, Dr. Miller, had given her a Xanax that day as she called in sick. And since she'd never taken Xanax before, Melanie said she'd started to realise that she was too fucked up to be driving, you know, all the way to Atlantic City to be stealing her husband's phone

and moving his car around? In the purely coincidental fact that she spotted his car in the first place. I think the amount of times I would find someone moving my car without my knowledge funny is zero times. Yeah, I agree. If you're having a fight about doing the laundry wrong. I don't think you're the kind of couple that's got the bants to pull off a car switcheroo. Just gonna say. So Melanie says she's too fucked up. She realises she can't drive all the way home from fucking Atlantic City so she hailed an unmarked taxi and paid $150 in cash for the cabbie to drive her back to Woodbridge at around 1am,

dropping her off near the train station. But then, once she got to the train station, Melanie said she changed her mind. Again! And she said that she now got a lift from yet another unlicensed taxi driver to take her all the way back to Atlantic City at about 3am, costing her another cool $200. She says when she got there she found her own car, because presumably, you know, Bill hadn't found it and played a very funny prank by moving her car,

and then she drove back to the Red Roof Inn in Edison, where she'd been staying, because she was apparently fearful that Bill might return to the Woodbridge house, but not fearful enough to not move his car or throw his mobile phone away. Or say a literal word about her child. It goes without saying that that story doesn't really make any sense. And I really tried to explain it in the most clear way possible. I know you did.

But it really just, it's not really computing. And despite making inquiries with local firms, detectives couldn't find any evidence that Melanie actually took these alleged cab rides. And sure it's 2004 and Uber isn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye yet, but there must be some sort of trail. I could believe it and I could say that maybe not. I'm with you on that. Like she does say she just flags down two random cabs and like pays them in cash.

So yeah. And that's how they worked back then. Yeah. Unless you called a mini cab company, which I think in America is a lot less like I was talking to a cabbie about it the other day, because it used to be like a part of your night out was when you would leave at the most likely time so you would be able to get a taxi because you just have to hail and there's nothing else you can do. And that's just gone now. I asked him the other day and I was like, are you

secretly like quite grateful for Uber because you have to deal with less tickets? And he was like, oh yeah, they can fucking have him. So much easier now. Let's leave that argument to one side because it could go either way, but I think I'm leaning towards it would be possible for her to take on documentable cabs. However, if Melanie was as afraid of Bill as she claimed to be, why would she be looking for him in Atlantic City where he's going to be drinking and gambling and even playing tricks on him? All high on Xanax apparently.

I'm like, okay, you may not have taken it before, which I don't believe anyway, but you know what it is. What does it do? What are the side effects of it? Oh, it's amazing. I feel too amazing to drive this car. what it is. What does it do? What are the side effects of? Oh, it's amazing. I feel too amazing to drive the car. Yeah, it's, it's a Benzo. So it's, it's anti-anxiety. Everything's great.

You're not worried about anything and then you just have a nice sleep. It's Valium basically, same family. At the courthouse a day later, presumably having woken up from a Xanax nap, Melanie was there to get her restraining order, and she told the judge that she had no idea of Bill's whereabouts despite having apparently moved his car just hours later. Police uncovered that Melanie made a second trip to Atlantic City on the night of the 1st of May, this time with her stepdad, Michael Cappararo. It looks like Melanie used this time to make a few calls on Bill's phone to create the impression that he was still alive and kicking.

Her EZ pass pinged at 12.54am at a toll in Atlantic City and just 16 minutes later, Bill's call records show that his phone called the Woodbridge house, but left no message. Melanie made a point of telling Bill's sisters that he'd called the house in the middle of the night. The whole thing just sounded completely untrue. Inspired by the hit, Wondery podcast, Against the Odds, completely untrue.

Inspired by the hit, wonder podcast, Against the Odds comes the gripping guidebook, How to Survive Against the Odds, Tales and Tips for Animal Attacks and Natural Disasters. This might just be the most important book you'll ever read. Go inside life or death situations where everyday people survived nature's most extreme scenarios. And learn how you can too. In these tales, you'll hear about the grit, willpower, and know-how needed to endure shipwrecks, alligator attacks, earthquakes, and more. You'll learn from experts, including top doctors, about what happens to your body and

mind in life-threatening situations. Plus important tips on what to do and equally important, what not to do when faced with a situation that is truly against the odds. Go to www.survivalguidebook.com to get your copy of How to Survive Against the Odds Today or visit your favorite bookstore. All right, very quick break because I know you are gagging to get back to this particular episode but we have to tell you a little bit about what's going on on Patreon this week. Certainly well this week we have Under the Duvet where I explain how hypnosis works badly but it works.

It does work and I will tell you how I came off the pill and now the back knee's back. We also have a little chat about Russell Brand and contemplate the composition of the soul and whether it even fucking matters. And then I do a little review on a throwback dating TV show that I watched on Channel 4 called Perfect Match where I literally couldn't believe, A, that people were smoking in clubs because it's that old, and then all the horrific things that were coming out of people's mouths. And you can listen to all of that over on Patreon and you can watch it too under the duvet as every week we release it, every Wednesday morning and also on Patreon you can get Red

Handed totally ad free and we also do monthly bonus episodes and you can find all of that at patreon.com forward slash red handed. But these trips to Atlantic City shady as they were didn't technically prove that Melanie was the one to chuck Bill's remains into the Chesapeake Bay all the way down in Virginia. But that pesky EZ pass would snitch on Melanie once again because it pinged at a toll near Delaware, the state between New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday the 4th of May. You're gonna have to add EZ pass to your list of appropriate places to say Z instead of Z. You're at five now. But once again, Melanie wasn't having any of it. She had a story prepared to explain herself. Melanie claimed that at around 7am that day, she left her kids at her parents' house in New Jersey

and set off for Delaware. The reason? Well, she was going furniture shopping for her future without bill. Because apparently Delaware is the place to go because it's one of only five states in the US with no sales tax. So she's, uh, she's spending $350 on casual cabs from Atlantic City to Woodbridge and back again. But she's like, better save my pennies on the sales tax for all this new furniture I need once I get my divorce from my dryer sheet stuffing husband. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately for Delaware, no sales tax is literally the only thing it has.

Omelets? No, that's Denver. So Melanie says that's the reason she was in Delaware, but she said that she didn't actually end up going to any furniture stores. She says that she got there too early and none of them were open. I just looked up what is Delaware famous for. Just says we're the first state, first of the 13 original colonies. That's all I've got to say. Oh, that's better than being like the fourth, I suppose.

Yes. Yep, that's true. Delaware is the least populated state in America. That's fact number two. Oh, I mean, is it pretty? The first pitch that comes up is quite nice. I'm sure it's fine, Delaware. Don't feel too bad about yourself. Oh, the first pitch that comes up is quite nice. I'm sure it's fine, Delaware. Don't feel too bad about yourself. So Melanie should feel bad about herself because she's absolutely fucked this furniture shopping trip.

I also only say that there's nothing in Delaware because when I name the 50 states of America, which as you know, I can do in under two minutes, I can't attach it to anything in my head. Sure. Well, now you know. First of 13 columns. These populated state. Melanie says that after she, you know, failed to get there in time for the furniture shops to open, they're presumably like if you've driven all the way to Delaware you might just hang around a bit until the shops open, but no she decided instead to ring up her lover, Dr Brad Miller, for a chat.

When he described his day as just another Tuesday, apparently it made Melanie remember that she'd agreed to meet her friend Celine for lunch all the way up in New York City. A loyal pal, Melanie hit the gas and drove all the way from Delaware to New York, the full three hours in time for lunch. At! Just in case you're thinking maybe they've got a reservation somewhere real nice and they don't want to, you know, lose out on that booking fee. No, they went to Red Lobster.

And Melanie paid for it on her credit card. So she had proof of where she was. And why are we telling you all of these details? Many reasons. The road that Melanie took to get to Delaware was the very same one that would take her down to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the tunnel, the spot where investigators theorized

that Bill's body was dumped in the water. And just a day after this alleged shopping trip, the first suitcase bobbed up in the bay. And perhaps most damning of all, police found that both Melanie and an unidentified man, thought to be her stepdad Michael, had called the EZEB Pass customer service line after her initial interviews, trying to dispute several charges from her account. So she does remember. Just far, far too late. And it's just get your dad to do it. These charges that Michael was disputing were related to Melanie's trips to Atlantic City and to Delaware. And they came to

a grand total of... 90 cents. Probably less than the call cost to make. So it seems a very odd thing to ring up about. Unless you wanted to cover up the fact that you'd be in those places, obviously. Yeah. Melanie did end up admitting that she had tried to get those EZEP charges removed but she said it was because she didn't want the police putting two and two together and making five. She says, I panicked. I absolutely tried to have those charges taken off because I feared that people would look at them and think what they ultimately ended up thinking. What? That... yeah. She knew it would make her look guilty as fuck.

Yeah. So she's like, I'm gonna go hard. Go hard on this fucking 90 cents toll bridge fee and try get it removed. Oh my god, Melanie. What a mess. Next time I'm in like a hangover anxiety cave I'm going to think about this. You should because honestly this is one of the most unnecessarily convoluted stories that we've covered. Now Melanie's sketchy movements were already casting a massive shadow over her claims of innocence.

There was still more to come. Bill's car, which had been towed from the Flamingo Motel to an impound lot in Atlantic City, had its own secrets inside. Police found two syringes and a vial of chloral hydrate in his glove box. A chloral hydrate is a sedative, which is mostly used clinically to induce sleep before surgery. It's also known as Mickey Finn or the knockout drug if you slip it into someone's drink. And get this, the prescription had been signed by none other than oral sex loving Dr Bradley

Miller. Miller claimed that it wasn't his signature however and suggested to cops that it looked like his lover Melanie's writing. A handwriting analyst would later be unable to definitively rule either way if it was her penmanship or not. But whatever, like a handwriting analysis, if she's done a good enough job forging it given that she is a nurse working under him, sees his signature all the time, it's probably not gonna really help. Yeah she knows how a prescription slip works. Yeah. So the prescription was in the name of a female patient at the fertility clinic, a lady named Tiffany Bain, who confirmed

that she'd never been prescribed chloral hydrate by Dr Miller. It's also a very odd thing for anyone to be prescribed at all. Yeah, what are you going to do? Could you just inject yourself with a syringe of this before you come in for your surgery that day? Sure. Be sure to not drive yourself in though because it will knock you out. This prescription, like we said, had been signed over for Tiffany Bain and it had been filled at a Walgreens pharmacy in Edison, about an eight minute drive from the Medicare Centre, where Melanie's kids went and where she had dropped them off on the morning of the 28th of April,

shortly before that prescription had been collected. Now while CCTV on the transaction from the pharmacy was unavailable, it wasn't exactly looking good for Melanie. While chloral hydrate didn't actually show up in Bill's toxicology report, it still played a key part of the picture that was forming for investigators. The substance is metabolized rapidly by the body within three hours of dosage so it's not inconceivable that it wouldn't show up even if Bill had been drugged with it. And perhaps the police thought Melanie may have planted it there to back up claims that she'd been repeating to

friends and family that she thought Bill was taking steroids. Chloral hydrate can be used to treat insomnia, which is a side effect of doping. As for Melanie, she insisted that Bill was the one to forge the prescription himself, using her patient database, which he knew she had access to when she was working from home. America still doesn't have GDPR like that, doesn't surprise me at all. And to be fair, Melanie did point to a number of previous occasions where Bill had in fact forged prescriptions using his late mum's name. And also incidents where he'd forged tips when working as a waiter. But overall these mental gymnastics were a bitter pill to swallow because all other roads lead to Melanie McGuire and you've got an EZ pass. And there's also a host of

internet searches that are quite incriminating that were found on Melanie and Bill's shared computer. Yeah, they really do put Casey Anthony's little Google search history to shame. In the weeks before Bill's death somebody using the shared McGuire device searched for undetectable poisons, state gun laws, instant poison, gun laws in Pennsylvania Toxic insulin levels Fatal insulin doses Fatal digoxin doses Instant undetectable poisons Pesticide has poison Insulin has poison Morphine poisoning

How to find chloroform Insulin's shock Neuromuscular blocking agents Sedatives, tranquilizers, barbiturates Nembutal, pharmacy, chloral hydrate and side effects, and Walgreens. Which for a nurse is very embarrassing that she had to check up on some of those things. Yeah, but that's also her fucking comeback. Yes, her retort to these searches being flying at her was to remind investigators that she is a nurse. Not that she already knew about all of these things but if she had to look them up then she would look them up somewhere else.

That's what I mean, our nurse is just googling? Our medical professional is just googling these things? Do they not have some sort of, I don't know, giant reference library that I can't access as a mere pleb? I don't know anymore. I really don't. Honestly, my faith in everything is so low now that when I had my appointment this morning it was just like a video consultation. And you know, I'm sure he did a good job. He gave me the antibiotics I needed. But like there was a lot of time when he wasn't speaking and he was just clicking things and I was like, I haven't said anything. You can't

be taking notes. Are you Googling my symptoms? Is that what's happening here? No shade, that's fine. I'm never going outside again. I'm just gonna become a hermit. Don't do it. You might get infected belly button Well, then I'll just let it eat me from the outside in There's technically no way to prove that it was Melanie who was doing those Googles. I bet that's something that hardly ever happens anymore. Who's got a shared computer these days? Don't do it. Don't do it. They'll take you down with you. I mean, could be the perfect alibi. There is that. Do all of your Googling in internet cafes. Yeah. or just Google nothing, go off grid, fake your death. Anyway, unprovable,

but even still, it doesn't really matter because Melanie's in really big trouble anyway. On the 2nd of June 2005, Melanie McGuire was arrested and charged with the murder and dismemberment of her husband Bill. In true TV drama fashion, police literally jumped from the bushes and apprehended her outside of her eldest son's school after drop-off. A not guilty plea was entered on her behalf and bail was set at a whopping $750,000. But amazingly, Melanie was able to come up with the money in just a few days and walked free. And then came another unexpected twist.

And this is great considering we've just done the zodiac. In August 2005, police got wind of a letter sent to a newspaper, reportedly written by Bill's real killer. The anonymous sender claimed to be a criminal associate of Bill's who called him Billy Mack and said that they'd murdered him over gambling debts. The anonymous criminal went on to write that he was having a crisis of conscience seeing Melanie taking the fall since her two young boys would be left without a mum. But this bizarre sob story from a mobster with a heart of gold didn't go down well with the police.

They figured that this was just Melanie once again trying to throw them off the scent and they actually whacked on even more criminal charges including hindering apprehension and perjury. This time Melanie's bail was set to another whopping $2.1 million. But guess what? Once again, she coughed up the cash. Melanie's parents and even some of her friends re-mortgaged their homes and emptied their savings, pulling every string they could to keep her out of jail. Some of Melanie's in a circle were less loyal. For some months leading up to her arrest and subsequent trial, the authorities wiretapped Melanie's calls and secretly recorded 500

hours of phone conversations. And guess who was surprisingly game to volunteer to try and lure Melanie into a confession. Her own lover, Dr. Brad Miller. He even continued to sleep with her for months while the calls were being recorded. Melanie says that she had absolutely no idea that he would do that to her and she felt enormously betrayed when she found out. But as with quite a lot of things Melanie says that might not actually be quite true. In these secretly recorded calls Melanie firmly denies killing Bill and never waivers on it. Which might seem to indicate her being innocent or you know a liar whatever but

if she knew she was being recorded then it doesn't really make any difference. I don't think it makes any difference anyway. No. Let's listen to an example call that we have for you that she made to her stepdad. How you doing? I spoke to, um, uh, what's his name about shipping. Hello. I didn't want to say names. You understand what I'm saying? Yep.

I mean, it's not even that sophisticated a code, is it? No. Not quite zodiac level. It's, yeah, so I think we can leave that one where it is. I don't think it matters that she never confesses on the phone at all. No. Even she's not that stupid. Now throughout the whole investigation, authorities felt certain Melanie had an accomplice. First of all, she's tiny and chopping up an adult man into three separate pieces and stuffing him into three different suitcases and then shoving him into the water

isn't exactly a walk in the park. I could do it. I believe. And the logistics involved in moving Bill's car, because remember the whole Atlantic city, there's the mystery driver and how is her car also there if she drove Bill's car up there, it really seemed to police like she must have had some help. Now they rolled out Dr Miller pretty quickly, perhaps due to his willingness to rat on Melanie with the wiretap phone conversations and also throw her under the bus and say that it looked like she had forged his signature on that prescription. So the most likely person was thought to be Michael Capraro, Melanie's loyal stepdad. But ultimately due to a lack of evidence in that regard, Melanie

was the only one with charges brought against her and this makes sense. I think some people might be wondering why did they just let it go? It's so obvious that somebody helped her because how did she get her card to Atlantic city also get Bill's card there, all of that sort of stuff. And also the size thing, but the police don't really want to open that kind of worms if they've got no evidence, because the minute you start saying, oh, it could have been two people, not just Melanie, you weaken your case at trial. Because then the prosecution could say, well, how do you know it was her at all?

How do you know it's not somebody else? How do you know it's not somebody else that made her do it? You really kind of want to keep it straight and narrow. It's her. Let's not talk about the fact that she had an accomplice. That is going to significantly make your prosecution's case against her much, much weaker. So yeah, they're just like, ah, we'll just ignore that.

her much much weaker. So yeah they're just like, ah, we'll just ignore that. And in March 2007 a sensational trial of Melanie McGuire finally began. Melanie had armed herself with a shit-hot defence team led by a high-profile hotshot named Joe Tuckapino with Stephen Tirano as co-counsel. The lead prosecutor was a woman named Patricia Patti Prezioso. What a fucking name. I know. My name's Patti Precious, nice to meet you. Who followed in the footsteps of the Menendez brothers, Leslie Abramsome, with the big hair and an even bigger presence. But this diva was on the other side of the table,

and she was determined to prove that Melanie McGuire had killed her husband. The prosecution brought forth a staggering 64 witnesses to support their case, and Patti Prezioso launched into the story that the nation was dying to hear. What Melanie did. According to the prosecution, Melanie got tired of her stormy marriage to Bill. She wanted out and was desperate to pursue a new life with her married doctor lover. But Melanie wasn't content with going down the standard separation route. Several witnesses testified to her discussing her worries about the high costs of divorce. So that's when

Melanie came up with her own unique escape plan, to murder Bill and make it look like the mob did it. The prosecution reminded the jury that on the 26th of April, just two days before Bill was last seen alive, Melanie bought her first ever gun. And to do that, she went all the way to a gun shop in Eastern Pennsylvania, using her own Pennsylvania registered driver's license as an ID. Her friend from nursing school, who's called James Finn, who Melanie knew had always carried a torch for her, said that she had contacted him out of the

blue some weeks before to ask him about gun laws, as if she was thinking of picking one up. Melanie had hinted at Bill's erratic behaviour and her desire to defend herself if necessary. What? That she would shoot him if she had to. Ah. Melanie later claimed in wiretap conversations with Finn that she'd only brought the gun on Bill's behalf since he wanted a weapon, but he couldn't have one because he'd got

driving offensives. Which is it Melanie? Finn said that she'd never said that before so he didn't believe it. At the gun store itself Melanie also picked up Wadcutter bullets, the sort that are usually only used for target practice, to neatly puncture paper targets. They're not the type of bullets that you would ordinarily see in a mob-style execution. I suppose you can't really Google that. But as we already know, they were the type of bullets that were found inside Bill's body. Sometime on the night of the 28th of April, the prosecution argued that Melanie served Bill a sedative lace drink.

He would have thought that they were celebrating the new house, but Melanie had murder in mind. She shot him twice in the stomach and then once in the head, possibly through a soft object like a cushion as a makeshift silencer. And the bullets did indeed have traces of greenish fibres visible on them, similar to the pillows and cushions at the Maguire House. Although they couldn't be conclusively linked. Bill's sister Cindy even testified that the couple had other green throw cushions that

seemed to have mysteriously gone missing after Bill's disappearance. Police theorised that Melanie had hauled Bill's body into the bathroom, probably into the shower, and to preserve it she'd probably packed it with ice. The next morning Melanie called in sick to the fertility clinic and explained that she'd had a big fight with Bill. She then started covering her tracks by commandeering Bill's devices, sending an email from Bill's Blackberry to his supervisor to say that he'd be off sick. But this email bounced back because whoever had sent it had inputted the wrong email address. Bill, according to witnesses, would have definitely known the correct email address. Continuing with the prosecution's

timeline, after picking up the kids from daycare later that day, Melanie took them to her parents' house in Barnagat, New Jersey. Then she booked a room at the Red Roof Inn nearby in Edison for a few days, presumably because she didn't want to sleep in the same house, of course. And that's when, according to Patti Peresioso, Melanie returned to the Woodbridge townhouse after her neighbours left for work. And then she began the arduous process of dismembering her husband and packing his remains into their smart Kenneth Cole matching luggage set. Investigators felt like Melanie just must have used a reciprocating saw and a knife to pull this

off. Neither of which were ever found. And they're pretty sure she must have done that with an unknown accomplice. It is a big job to do on your own, especially if you've frozen the body for a few days. Why would you not do the chopping up first? Apparently it's easier to chop up a body that's been frozen. Yeah. Cause it's less like wibbly wobbly stay stiff. Can just chop straight through it. Oh, wow. The more you know. And less messy.

The blood doesn't flow about. Well, of course, yeah. And over the next few days, Melanie got to work covering her tracks. She took the trips to Atlantic City to move Bill's car and then set up even more fake activity from his mobile devices. She later drove through the night down to Chesapeake Bay Bridge where she threw the suitcases into the black water below, which has actually always been a strange sticking point in the story. Along the route that Melanie allegedly

took she would have had plenty of opportunities to chuck the cases into the Atlantic Ocean, a far safer bet than an enclosed body of water, like the Chesapeake Bay. That seems so obvious. But the thing is, Bill had links to Virginia, and he'd even stubbornly tried to convince his dyed in the wool jersey wife to move down there in days gone by. So perhaps chucking

him in the Chesapeake Bay may have been Melanie's twisted way of fucking with Bill even in death, because he had always wanted to settle down in Virginia after all. Still though, the bay is so stupid. I know. I don't get't, I don't get it. I don't get it. And it makes it seem even less likely that it's the mob because I just don't think they would put a body in a place that it would be so likely to be discovered. But also saying that maybe if you know it's a professional hit, which kind of doesn't

really look like, and you know it's not be linked back to you, maybe you're less bothered about it being found. I don't know. Now, as you might have noticed, the bulk of the prosecution's case was based on circumstantial evidence. And interestingly, investigators struggled to find any real forensic evidence at the Woodbridge townhouse to support the theory that Melanie had killed and dismembered Bill there.

Luminol tests found zero blood in the bathroom, despite them even checking pipes and even tearing out parts of the wall, which is very unusual. But we do know that the place had been meticulously cleaned from top to bottom by Melanie and her friend Celine. But, I don't know, you really need to use the right product to get blood out that perfectly. And for them to have found nothing? Yeah. Weird. Now Patti Prezioso, the prosecutor, tried to argue that this in and of itself was suspicious.

The fact that they didn't find anything and the fact that these two had cleaned the house that deeply. Who cleans that deeply when you're moving out? But Melanie insisted that it was just because she wanted to get her full deposit back after moving out. You don't get a deposit when you buy the house. It's a rental thing. It's a wood bridge I think is the rental and they're moving into the townhouse? No, because they've got the keys. Yeah. I don't know.

But it still doesn't let Melanie quite off the hook. No and I will say like who's to say she did chop him up in the house if I was her and I had two acres of land? Chopping him out in the woods. I'm putting him in bin bags and I'm chopping him in the woods. Yeah. Don't fucking chop him up in the house. That's how they get you.

Yeah. And, you know, dragging him out. I mean, if you've got helpers, he doesn't even touch the sides, does he? Quite. However, it's not like there's no evidence linking Melanie to the murder of her husband. Tiny particles of skin belonging to Bill were found on the floor mats of his car, which were gruesomely dubbed human sawdust by the prosecution. But like, I'd be more suspicious if pieces of my skin weren't in my car.

Where have they gone? Who's stealing my skin? Well, apparently I'm full of shit because according to medical examiner Dr Hugh, these skin cells, the ones that were found on the floor mats, were larger than those that we passively shed in daily life, so it's pretty unlikely that they did come from a living person. The prosecution contended that Melanie and her accomplice, whoever that may have been, must have unwittingly transferred the particles on their shoes when moving Bill's car and that does make sense. When moving out of the Woodbridge house in late May 2004, Melanie chucked out all of Bill's clothes in bin bags. A neighbour got hold of them, which I have so many

questions about. Why is that happening? Ah. And those bags were forensically compared to the ones encasing Bill's body parts. And those findings were the ones that were nothing short of damning for Melanie McGuire. Because among Patti Precioso's, 64 witnesses was a plastic bag expert.

Hey man, one born every minute. He was called Frank Ruiz, and he was a manufacturer of plastic bags with over 27 years of experience in plastic bag technology. I bet he loves Greenpeace so much. And he testified that the two sets of bags had been produced in the exact same production line within hours of each other. So they almost certainly came from the same batch of bin bags. And in yet another slam dunk against Melanie, it emerged that Bill's body had also been wrapped in branded medical blankets that are supplied to various

clinics in New Jersey, including Reproductive Medical Associates, which is where she worked. That is such a boring name. Reproductive Medical Associates. Yeah. No. Bing bang baby is quite obviously what it should be called. One witness even testified that Melanie had previously used the same brands of

blankets to wrap furniture during a house move. Just stealing all the blankets from this fertility clinic. To be fair, my mom is a nurse and I grew up in a house full of hospital blankets because they're really warm. Like maybe they don't have them anymore but like in the 90s when my mom was working in hospitals, those like very heavy like woven white blankets with like the hospital stamp on them. They're really warm especially if you've got a poorly baby. So just nick them. And the NHS was fine back then, it was fine. It was fine. It's not like now. I'm not surprised that she nicked blankets.

That's so funny. It's not even to keep her baby warm, it's to wrap furniture in. Fair, fair, fair. I'm sure a sofa got wrapped in one of them at some stage. If you got them, use them. Anyway, sir, that's pretty much all Patty needed to roll out. In contrast to Patty's endless parade of, you know, expert witnesses, the defence only brought 16 witnesses to the stand. The thrust of their argument was that there was enough reasonable doubt to free Melanie from being convicted. Her attorney, Joe Tacopino, accused the prosecution of being blinkered

and refusing to properly investigate other avenues, branding Melanie as their culprit from the start. What about all the circumstantial evidence pointing to Melanie? Well, it's just a load of unfortunate coincidences, nothing more. It could have been some faceless mobster the Bill had managed to run afoul of on his high stakes jaunts to Atlantic City. They insinuated that the way Bill had been shot twice in the summer come once in the head was consistent with Mafia-style killings. But ultimately the defences story was just a bit too wishy-washy for the jury to believe. While Melanie's defence team only had vague claims about Bill's links to dangerous thugs,

it didn't compare to the mountains of evidence presented by Patti Precioso. And on the 23rd of April 2007, after 23 days of testimony and three days of deliberation, the jury found Melanie McGuire guilty of murdering her husband. Judge Frederick DeVesa described it as a very horrible and brutal murder, with an obvious level of complexity and methodical detail. Melanie was ultimately convicted on four charges of murder, desecrating remains, possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose, and perjury in the first degree. On the bright side, she was cleared of the extra charges of

perjury hindering apprehension and tampering by, you know, sending misleading letters to newspapers claiming to be a mobster who had killed Bill, as well as the possession of Xanax without a prescription. Still, that didn't mean much to Melanie. She was going down. Melanie clung to her lawyer Joe Takapino while sobbing my babies, knowing that she'd possibly never see her sons again. But before Melanie's sentencing, there would be one more batshit crazy twist in the tale.

A jailhouse informant called Christopher Tiemme made a bombshell claim that Bill McGuire had been deeply in debt to Atlantic City mobsters. And Christopher said he had it on pretty good authority that Bill McGuire had been whacked. This was a glimmer of hope for Team Melanie and her lawyers gleefully called for a new trial on the basis of this new evidence. Huge if true, could she have been telling the truth the whole time? No. Christopher the Squealer was swiftly exposed to be a liar, who had form for injecting himself into high-profile cases without landish claims.

He ultimately recanted his story and even accused Melanie's defence lawyer of asking him to give false testimony, with a promise that her family would pay him for his services. So with it all debunked Melanie McGuire's lawyers quietly withdrew their request for a new trial. And so Melanie McGuire was now facing the rest of her life behind bars. On the 19th of July 2007, aged 34, Melanie began a life sentence at the Edna Mahan correctional facility in New Jersey. She would only be eligible for parole at the tender age of 101. Melanie continues to profess her innocence even today, insisting that she was a victim of an unjust court system. She says, I expected the worst, and what I got was one step shy of the worst. I'm not sure, Melanie,

but I think, but Bill might have come off worse than me. Yep, yep, yep. Still, while Melanie languishes in prison, she does have some people on her side. In 2019, criminologists Megan Sacks and Amy Schosberg started a podcast called Direct Appeal, dedicated to looking into this notorious case. Their verdict? The courts got it wrong. Why am I not surprised?

The podcast points to certain areas where anomalous evidence was glossed over in favour of the neat narrative of Melanie's guilt, like the fact that animal hairs were found on Bill's body that were allegedly not fully tested. Since Melanie didn't have any pets or links to animals, the hosts argued that the authorities were wrong to dismiss this as not of evidentiary value. The podcast also highlights confusion surrounding whether Melanie's shiny new gun was actually consistent with the bullets found in Bill's body. According to the manufacturer's website, the Taurus.38 calibre gun had only five lands

and grooves. Those are the little indentations on the handgun's barrel that mark the bullets. But the bullet that killed Bill had six lands and grooves. So hang on, does that blow this whole case wide open? Not according to Patti Prezioso, who responded that the numbers stated on the website were simply an error that was later amended. According to ballistics experts who testified at trial, Melanie's gun model did have the right number of lands and groups.

We're not going to say that nobody should question verdicts, but like... This is the thing. We do it, right? We look at old cases, we look at old notorious cases, and we are like, you know, the staircase killings, Scott Peterson. We look at cases like this and we're like, were the courts right or was there some miscarriage of justice? We go into it as open-minded as possible. We look at the information, we come to a conclusion. My problem is I think more often than not,

these podcasters are ending up at a conclusion of miscarriage of justice because it's a better story than now the court's got it right. Yeah. Because often they do. Yeah, not every case that has ever been adjudicated is a miscarriage of justice. Just because that person says they didn't do it. Prisons are full of people who say they didn't do it. Exactly. The more cynical among you will notice that all of these people who have these media campaigns don't look like the back end of a bus, do they?

So just, you know, keep your wits about you. Sure, not everything in this case can be neatly tied up and explained away, but it's very, very rare that that happens in any case ever because life isn't nice and neat and uncomplicated and neither is death and like that just is. No, we're not living in an episode of CSI. You guys don't need us to tell you this, but that's the thing. It's not how cases. Ever. No.

What? There will be, if you look into any case that is a slam dunk that you, we all feel yeah, that person definitely did it. You could pull out any sort of random information that you could be like, well, why wasn't that looked at? Because sometimes it just doesn't matter. And it does look in this case, in my opinion, that does not matter at all, in any reasonable way. It looks like she did it.

Yeah, just because there's animal hairs on him. What is your narrative for why there were animal hairs on him? How does that link for why there were animal hairs on him? How does that link him to a mob hit that makes it look like that should have been something that was explored further? Just because you can't explain it doesn't mean it's linked to the crime. No. In cases like this, it is not about every single thing being neatly tied away, every single piece of quote unquote evidence being explained and like neatly pointing

to who you think is the killer, it's about, and we say it again, we say it all the time, it's about the totality of the evidence and the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. And there's a reason for that. And maybe one day we'll eat our words. It's happened before. But I'm pretty confident this time. And look, I'm happy to make U-turns. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm happy to make U-turns. It's okay to change your mind.

Yeah, and I think when we did the Lucy Letbe one, we obviously changed our minds from feeling like she was guilty to feeling like now I do genuinely believe it was a gross miscarriage of justice. And I remember when we did the recording, you were like, oh, but there might be more evidence that comes out that makes us change our mind and that might well happen. And there was actually a great comment I saw in the YouTube comments. I was like, you know what, that's a really good way to think about it. And they were like, the number of U-turns you make or the

number of times you change your mind in the pursuit of the truth does not matter. And I was like, nailed it. I agree. I trust nobody less than someone who refuses to change their mind. Sorry, debate the other day on TikTok. There's a lot of like atheist versus 20 Christians, whatever, which when you can't sleep is entertaining. And I think there's a doctor speaking to a woman about something and he just sits there and he's like, is there anything I could say to you to change your mind? And she's like, no, probably not because I can read. And he was like, well then this debate is completely pointless, isn't it? Because this makes no difference. So just, it's okay, it's fine.

Listen to other people and if they change your mind, you can have 10 house points from me, personally. I'll send them to your house via owl. So there you are, Melanie McGuire. You can make your own minds up. I'm not the boss of you. No, I think the courts got it right this time. Yeah. Yeah. So that's it guys.

That is the much requested case of Melanie McGuire, the suitcase killer. When I first heard about this and I saw pictures of her, I, because all the pictures of her are like smiling, blah, blah, blah, I thought, Oh God, she was the one chopped up and put in a suitcase. So that's it guys. We will see you next week for another Red Handed. I have literally just got an email from, um, Nextdoor. You're not going to believe this.

Suitcase found. Yes. No. Stoke, Newington South. Suitcase abandoned in Gillespie Park. Hmm. Uh oh. I love Nextdoor so fucking much. I had it and then I just had lots of weird people commenting and saying things to me and I just deleted it.

Oh no no no no I don't post it. No I just lurk. Well, not sponsored by Nextdoor, but go forth and lurk and we will see you next week when we will maybe have an update on whether Hannah's neighborhood has got a body in a suitcase. Hey man, hackney, hackney. Goodbye. Bye. Last year, long crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation.

She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car. Karen Reed is arrested and charged with second degree murder. The six week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reed kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent.

How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristin Thorn, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast Karen the retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth. I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen the retrial, exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. World of Secrets, The Killing Call,

a BBC World Service investigation into the murder of Punjabi singer and rapper Sidhu Musheala. The facts, they aren't out in the open. Why is Sidhu Musheala, you know? Uncovering a global criminal underworld that reaches far beyond India's borders. There are so many rumours. No one wants to talk.

There might be repercussions. World of Secrets, The Killing Call. beyond India's borders.